Keep fighting for justice, because the human world is not designed to deliver it easily.
It’s actually designed very much to not deliver justice. The people who designed it are often the ones benefiting from its dysfunction.
The trial hinged on the following 17 seconds, which saw the Audi reverse a short distance, hitting an unmarked car behind, then accelerate forward, reaching an estimated 12mph before colliding with the BMW and a parked Tesla.
Armed officers were heard shouting “go, go, go” and “armed police, get out of the f***ing car,” as they surrounded the vehicle, in footage played in court.
The Audi then reversed at 8mph, hitting the unmarked Volvo behind, and was stationary as Mr Blake pulled the trigger of his carbine less than a second later
Some context for people who won’t click the article
Police consider a moving vehicle a deadly weapon. Thus, if you’re trying to flee from them by driving, especially in an erratic manner, you’re considered to be wielding a deadly weapon and they can thereby respond with lethal force.
Agree or disagree, this is the logic.
Even calling it logic is pushing it.
“Pretense”, “excuse”, or “bloodlust-induced delusion” would be more accurate.
By that “logic”, they’d be justified in murdering every single motorist for at some point swerving unexpectedly.
You know that people are killed by cars, like, all the time right?
People are killed by their bodies much more often, want people to be murdered on the street for operating THOSE “erratically” too?
There’s simply no justification for shooting someone who’s not imminently and acutely endangering the life of someone else.
Driving into another car at 15mph does NOT do that.
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Neither the article, or anything mentioned in these comments is claiming the victim’s ‘innocence’. They are however making the point that EVEN if you do all of those things you shouldn’t expect to be shot and killed.
Your comment sounds equivalent of claiming girls that dress provocatively deserve to be raped. It just isn’t the point. The point is that he should not have been killed.
People like to conveniently forget that we have the courtroom to decide someone’s innocence or guilt. The police should not be judge, jury, and executioner.
The police should not be
judge, jury, and executioner.Fixed it for you.
Your comment sounds equivalent of claiming girls that dress provocatively deserve to be raped.
My comment specifically states that killing him wasn’t the optimal solution here, so I can’t see how that’s your intrepretation of it.
Nobody ever deserves to be shot. That’s completely incompatible with my worldview. However, sometimes it’s justified.
EDIT: For context, the deleted comment said:
Can’t a man with a lengthy rap sheet even go on a night drive in a stolen(?) vehicle, ram a few police cars, and resist arrest without getting shot at these days?
In all seriousness, killing him clearly wasn’t the optimal solution, but it shows once again that the ‘innocent’ people getting shot by police are rarely so innocent after all.
Nobody ever deserves to be shot (…) However
“Murder is wrong, BUT” is a really weird hill to die on…
What’s your point?
I don’t think a murdered deserves to die but I think killing them in self defence is perfectly justfied.
My comment specifically states that killing him wasn’t the optimal solution here, so I can’t see how that’s your intrepretation of it.
That’s my interpretation of it because you’re basically saying that because he was breaking the law (maybe you’re saying that it’s because he was breaking specific laws), it’s justified that he was shot and killed.
Whether you want to pussyfoot around the distinction between him deserving it and it being justified is beside the point from my perspective because I don’t believe he did deserve it or that it was justified.
Seems like we’ll just have to agree to disagree on this one.
I haven’t exactly claimed it was justified either. I’m literally hearing about this for the first time, and all my knowledge comes from this single article, so I don’t have enough information to form an informed opinion on whether opening fire was justified or if they could’ve just moved out of the way or not been there in the first place. My comment was more about cases like this in general rather than this specific one.
Let’s be real here. The reason articles like this get so much media attention is because the victim was black, and the narrative of police being racist is a popular one. People, however, really struggle to acknowledge that, justified or not, the lifestyle of the majority of these infamous black people shot by police has been such that they themselves were likely fully aware it could be a possible outcome. Very rarely (though not never) does someone truly innocent get intentionally shot by police for no reason. This situation was perfectly avoidable.
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Kind of like how most children who are violently beaten by their owners/parents did something wrong. Yes it’s illegal, and it’s over the top, but it’s very useful to point out that beaten children have probably done something bad. It’s so useful, it really informs my judgement.
most children who are violently beaten by their owners/parents did something wrong
What a ridiculous claim!
it’s very useful to point out that beaten children have probably done something bad
Again, no. It’s not at all useful to defend child beaters thus. Especially since it’s extremely doubtful that your claim is even true in the first place.
it really informs my judgement.
Which says a lot about you, none of it good.
I was replying to someone who said “just goes to show that most innocent people police kill aren’t innocent” or whatever. Because it’s very useful to point out that people did a bad thing when police execute them on the street.
I’m being sarcastic by the way.
Ah ok, apologies for the misunderstanding 😁
No problem, I probably shouldn’t immediately use such a weighty topic when I was just trying to be ridiculous to make fun of ridiculousness.
Let’s all take a moment to not at the bottom of the article that it says since 1990 only 83 people have died in such incidents. That is a goal the US could never hope to achieve in my lifetime.
So any background on what the cops knew at the time? It says the car was reported to have been involved in a shooting at a school… but no gus were found and it was night I think. Also I have heard others say (but haven’t seen in an article) that the car was stolen and the guy who died had a rap sheet. I doubt the cops knew who he was, but they might have known the car was stolen. But if they knew none of these things, that would be a pretty stark picture.
He was supposedly a “Core member of a gang, and a gunman in a nightclub shooting” days before this incident unfolded.